Karachi: Pasban e Pakistan President Altaf Shakoor has demanded freeing universities of Sindh province from political pressure so that the future of our younger generation could be saved and secured.
In a statement here Monday, he stressed that the universities must be freed from political pressure. He suggested that a vice chancellor should be appointed on the basis of the shared governance of the university. The VC search committee should comprise of three nationally-recognized scholars, two Supreme Court judges and two faculty members. He said the universities can’t function without true autonomy and academic freedom. He said unless we gave autonomy to our varsities, the future of our youth be put in jeopardy.
He said giving universities under full control of a chief minister would be a sure recipe of their downslide. How would a CM know the multi-faceted demands of the academic world he asked, adding could our CM see such political influences on American universities he went to? He said in whole world universities are given autonomy and they are run by top-notch academics and scholars, not corrupt and crooked politicians.
He said wholesale recruitment of incompetent people on political basis in government-run universities of Sindh has made them dens of corruption and mismanagement. He said the NAB and other corruption watchdogs have already been probing into the corruption of billions of rupees in the government-run in this province, including Karachi University, Sindh University, SALU Khairpur and QAUEST Nawabshah. He said giving the universities under the chief minister would be like opening of new floodgates of corruption in them, as the province of Sindh already braves more corruption, nepotism and mismanagement than any other province of Pakistan.
Altaf Shakoor demanded that the government universities in Sindh be allowed to be run by experienced and capable academics and committed educationalists purely on merit and they should not given to the corrupt ruling Waderas, who have already destroyed every sector of this province. He said the Pasban thinks that only with promoting higher education we can reshape the destiny of Sindh and whole Pakistan. He said we have been demanding for long to establish at least one university and one teaching hospital in every district of Sindh and Pakistan.
He said saving our universities from growing political influence is the need of the hour and the Pasban would continue to raise this issue on every available forum. He said we are committed to the cause of education because the future of our children depends on it.